promiscuous drunks, friendly calls, and humbug resolutions

I'll just start right off the bat by saying that title is a bit misleading.  Sorry.  While I could have gotten drunk and had a jolly old time for NYE, I forgot to buy cider when I was out and there was no point in risking my life on the dangerous drunken roads of the New Year.  (As much as I love making fun of how my dear mother worries, she does often have a point, and this is one of those rare occasions where I actually agree with her.  After 8pm on December 31st, I like to stay put.)  So, the whole not-driving-on-NYE thing takes care of the "friendly calls" part, and I've never been one for keeping resolutions, and I long since resolved not to make them.  So, I guess the title is more than a bit misleading.  It's actually just an outright lie.  If I had to describe my night, it would probably look something like this:  "Facebook, Father Ted, and Blankets"

Which, in all honesty, is not a bad way to go.

When I think back on 2011, it's hard to believe that what happened actually happened to me.  A year ago  tomorrow, I was dropped off at the Columbus airport nearly four hours early en route to Galway, Ireland.  I had short hair, snazzy glasses, and a new (used) iPod to entertain me.  Some hours later, I was in Dublin, trying to keep an amiable look about me and listen as people tried to tell me about what my life would look like for the next five-or-so months.  (No matter how much they told me about cooking for myself, I knew I'd be burning water and eating lots of raw pasta.)   Everyone seemed to be just bursting with tired excitement, but, if I'm to be telling the truth, I was genuinely terrified.  I'd brought more than just the allotted 23kg checked baggage, and planning to work on all my social anxieties in a new country where I knew not a soul was probably the worst (see: best) idea I've had in a while.

I'm not going to lie and say it was a sudden thing, that the raging winter winds just up and whipped all the shyness out of me as I crossed over the Corrib to start classes at NUIG.  And I'm not gonna say that I didn't cry once the entire term, because there were definitely times when I was so frustrated and confused that I did sit in my room and wonder what the hell did I think I was doing.  Gradually, though, I began to figure it out.  I actually made friends on my own, and I wasn't afraid to ask people to hang out.  I felt valued as an individual for the first time in ages, like I was involved, engaged, and wanted.  And as I began to value myself again, I rediscovered the courage from my freshman year at Oberlin to not let opportunities pass me by, just because no one else wanted to grab them with me.  There was no shame in going for a pint alone, and there was something so breathtakingly exhilarating in my solitary late-night walks though the city.  Literally, I felt like I could do anything!  And I really could.  I had my first pint, learned to speak Irish, danced reels on the street, met Josh Ritter in Dublin, stayed with relatives-of-my-dance-teacher's-sister in Kilkenny, rode a bike around Inis Mor, saw bog bodies, took archaeology classes, rode a giant swing even though I was sure I would die, watched EuroVision live, found a new melodramatic soap opera, cooked for myself, stayed up past 4am and slept past noon, explored Barna Woods on a whim, spoke German without fear, saw a murder hole in a medieval castle, was followed by a dude in a horse mask, ate corn on pizza, went to mass in an honest-to-god cathedral, and loads of other amazing things.  Oh, yeah, and then I went around Europe by myself for four weeks.  No big deal or anything.

(Just kidding, by the way.  It's a huge deal.  Really...just...what a life!)

Now, loving oneself may seem like such an elementary concept, but it's something I'd somehow managed to forget, and what's sad is that I forgot again as soon as I started back at Oberlin.  It was literally like someone had turned all my memories of Ireland and Europe to smoke and I was clutching madly after them to no avail.  From where I'm standing at the beginning of 2012 and looking back to the beginning of this past semester, again, it's hard to believe that what happened happened to me.  It's hard to believe that I could have felt so deeply alone that I would have to leave movie nights to cry in the bathroom.  It was like I was living in a soap opera where nothing goes right and everyone ends up needing brain surgery and a miracle.  What had been empowering abroad suddenly felt so soul-crushingly terrible that I almost gave up.  After three and a half years struggling at Oberlin but refusing to throw in the towel, and in the midst of writing a senior thesis, I honestly came this close to taking a personal leave and never coming back.  I would have been glad to leave, too.  Lord knows I'd thought about leaving for long enough.

I'm not going to lie and say that I still don't wonder what my life would have been like if I'd transferred after my first year like I'd planned, but that's a different life I'll never lead.  There's no use thinking about it, anyway, and what makes the horrible first half of this semester so hard to believe, honestly, is the fact that the last few weeks were positively wonderful.  I'm not going to try to explain it, because I honestly can't, but for some reason, I started to wake up smiling.  Co-op life, which had frustrated me to no end at the beginning of the semester, all of a sudden began to fulfill me once more.  My wonderful co-workers, who had supported me through all of my (probably annoying) troubles at the beginning of the semester, continued to be some of the best friends a girl could ask for.  I met new people in the co-op and in my honors seminar.  For the first time since I quit taking the viola seriously, I enjoyed going to CCS rehearsal every Tuesday.  I watched (and screamed over) Merlin every Saturday with the fandom friends.  I dyed my bangs purple.  I started up a random e-mail correspondence with a friend who was abroad in Spain, which turned out to be a real highlight.  I played hide-&-seek in the library.  I opened up about being Catholic to people I hadn't really talked to much before.  I decorated my study carrel.  I fell back in love with my thesis topic.  I was invited to a party and I drank rummy things.  I went to the ice-rink almost every week and made an arse of myself on skates.  I cuddled and snuggled and played a mean game of Twister.  Literally, I think one of my best semesters at Oberlin was somehow condensed into a whirl-wind of a month, and it's almost like the first half was nothing but a bad dream I could only vaguely remember when I finally woke up.

So, as I begin to condition myself to write 2012 on all my essays from this point until 2013, I can't say I'll be glad to have left last year behind.  In many ways, I would give all I have to be abroad in Galway again, and I hopefully will be starting my last semester at Oberlin the same way I left--happy.  At the same time, though, I need to look forward.  I said before that I don't like to make resolutions because I never keep them, and there's no fun in being disappointed in yourself.  I do, however, want to take a moment and think about everything I can be (and hopefully will be) be in the coming year.  I will be a second-semester college senior who has never lived in a dorm or eaten in a dining hall thanks to the Oberlin Student Co-operative Association.  I will be teaching an Irish Dance ExCo.  I will get back into shape because I'll have no choice, what with teaching dance and taking a running/fitness course.  I will eat a lot of baked goods, thanks to Professor Romano's kitchen.  I will build snowmen and continue skating.  By April 27th, I will have written a 60-page thesis, and by the end of May, I will be a college graduate.  And someday, hopefully soon, I will be back on a plane, the anticipation will just be too much as the coast of that little teddy-bear-shaped island comes into view, and I'll go on smiling like an absolute lunatic.